Hand Count of Recall Petitions Pushes Test of Alameda County District Attorney Down the Line

On Thursday, Alameda County election officials said they would manually count the signatures submitted in a petition to recall District Attorney Pamela Price.

That’s after a count made by random sampling was “not sufficient to determine whether the signature threshold to call for a recall election has been met,” according to a statement from Tim Dupuis, the Registrar of Voters.

Recall proponents submitted more than 120,000 signatures on March 4, the eve of the primary election. They need just over 73,000 of those signatures to be deemed valid to put the recall on the ballot.

Time is ticking: The campaign to recall Price — called Save Alameda for Everyone — has been pushing to hold a recall as soon as possible. They want the recall voted on in a special election held before the end of April. The delay caused by a manual count makes that less likely.

How long that delay will last is unclear.

According to county law, the registrar has 10 days from when recall petitions are filed to complete the count, whether using a sample size or a manual count. That deadline passed on Thursday. The county charter does not provide extra time for a manual count.

The registrar did not respond to phone calls on Friday. In an interview Thursday, Dupuis told the East Bay Express that the count would likely take 30 days, citing state law, which provides 30 days from filing to complete the signature count.

Price supporters say if the county is going by state laws, then it should also require recall proponents meet the state’s required number of signatures to qualify for a recall election, which is about 20,000 more than the county requirement.

“They’ve never done this before, and now they are making it up as they go along,” William Fitzgerald, spokesperson for the Protect the Win campaign, said of the registrar.

Never seen before: Alameda County has never held a recall election, and it’s working with rules written in 1926, when the county was a quarter of the size it is today.

In the background: The registrar is still counting votes from the primary, which includes votes for Measure B, a rule that will change how the county handles recalls. Measure B is headed toward approval with 65% of the vote.

County officials have said that Measure B will not impact the recall signature count because it began before voters approved the measure.

The county was unclear on whether Measure B would impact the scheduling of recall elections. The county has estimated that holding a special election would cost around $20 million. It’s in its interest to push a recall election to November when it would be consolidated with the general election. Now that the results of Measure B will be finalized before a decision is made on a recall election, the argument that the provisions in Measure B — which make it more likely that a recall election would be held in November — apply to a Price recall just got stronger.

What They’re Saying: For their part, recall proponents said the recount doesn’t bother them.

“It provides another level of validity to the signatures we provided,” Brenda Grisham, the principal officer at SAFE, said on Friday.